Thatcher was wrong on apartheid, says Cameron

Last updated at 16:00 27 August 2006

David Cameron made another break with the Tories' past, admitting today that Margaret Thatcher been had been wrong to brand Nelson Mandela's African National Congress "terrorists" during the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.

The Conservative leader praised the former president - whom he met on Wednesday during a visit to Johannesburg - as "one of the greatest men alive".

"The mistakes my party made in the past with respect to relations with the ANC and sanctions on South Africa make it all the more important to listen now," he wrote in The Observer.

"The fact that there is so much to celebrate in the new South Africa is not in spite of Mandela and the ANC, it is because of them - and we Conservatives should say so clearly today."

In the 1980s, Mrs Thatcher caused bitter controversy - both in Britain and overseas - when she refused to back sanctions against South Africa, pursuing instead a policy of "constructive engagement".

But her policy was defended by her former party chairman, Lord Tebbit, who said Mr Cameron had failed to understand what was happening at the time.

"Because of his age, Mr Cameron is looking at these events as part of history. Others of us who lived through them and had input into the discussions at the time see things very differently," he told The Observer.

"The policy of the Thatcher government was a success. The result was an overwhelmingly peaceful transition of power in which the final initiative for the handover came not from foreigners but from native South Africans - Afrikaner South Africans, at that."